Although they were expecting more, Nintendo was able to sell a good number of its Nintendo 3DS within the first thirteen months since its release. Nintendo expected to sell sixteen million 3DS units. At least that was their target. However, they were “only” able to sell 13.5 million units – roughly 15% less than targeted.

Now the question is: Why didn’t they sell more? Could it be the price? When the Nintendo 3DS first came out, its selling price was $250, a price that is too costly for some. Then it dropped to $170. But in spite of that, no drastic change happened. On the other hand, when the PlayStation Vita was launched by Sony last December in Japan, Nintendo’s premier game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, praised the devices for its specs. But he added that it just didn’t have enough games.

When interviewed by Edge at Paris, the famous Mario inventor said, “It’s obviously a very hi-spec machine, and you can do lots of things with it. But I don’t really see the combination of software and hardware that really makes a very strong product.” While the PS Vita obviously has better-looking games when compared to the Nintendo 3DS, Sony has yet to design more games “for” the device.

“When we launched the 3DS hardware we didn’t have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn’t have Mario Kart 7, we didn’t have Kid Icarus: Uprising. We were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren’t able to deliver them at the time,” said Miyamoto, “We were kind of hoping that people would, nevertheless, buy into the product, but looking back we have to say we realize the key software was missing when we launched the hardware,” he added.

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